Essays on the modern reception of the Middle Ages, built round the central theme of the ethics of medievalism. Ethics in post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages form the main focus of this volume. The six opening essays tackle such issues as the legitimacy of reinventing medieval customs and ideas, at what point the production and enjoyment of caricaturizing the Middle Ages become inappropriate, how medievalists treat disadvantaged communities, and the tension between political action and ethics in medievalism. The eight subsequent articles then build on this foundation as they concentrate on capitalist motives for melding superficially incompatible narratives in medievalist video games, Dan Brown's use of Dante's Inferno to promote a positivist, transhumanist agenda, disjuncturesfrom medieval literature to medievalist film in portrayals of human sacrifice, the influence of Beowulf on horror films and vice versa, portrayals of war in Beowulf films, socialism in William Morris's translation of Beowulf, bias in Charles Alfred Stothard's Monumental Effigies of Great Britain, and a medieval source for death in the Harry Potter novels. The volume as a whole invites and informs a much larger discussion on such vital issues as the ethical choices medievalists make, the implications of those choices for their makers, and the impact of those choices on the world around us. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Mary R. Bowman, Harry Brown, Louise D'Arcens, Alison Gulley, Nickolas Haydock, Lisa Hicks, Lesley E. Jacobs, Michael R. Kightley, Phillip Lindley, Pascal J. Massie, Lauryn S. Mayer, Brent Moberley, Kevin Moberley, Daniel-Raymond Nadon, Jason Pitruzello, Nancy M. Resh, Carol L. Robinson, Christopher Roman, M.J. Toswell.

Essays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the middle ages. This volume not only defines medievalism's margins, as well as its role in marginalizing other fields, ideas, people, places, and events, but also provides tools and models for exploring those issues and indicates new subjects towhich they might apply. The eight opening essays address the physical marginalizing of medievalism in annotated texts on medieval studies; the marginalism of oneself via medievalism; medievalism's dearth of ecotheory and religious studies; academia's paucity of pop medievalism; and the marginalization of races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and literary characters in contemporary medievalism. The seven subsequent articles build on this foundation while discussing: the distancing of oneself (and others) during imaginary visits to the Middle Ages; lessons from the margins of Brazilian medievalism; mutual marginalization among factions of Spanish medieval studies; and medievalism in the marginalization of lower socio-economic classes in late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Spain, of modern gamers, of contemporary laborers, and of Alfred Austin, a late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century poet also known as Alfred the Little. In thus investigating the margins of and marginalization via medievalism, the volume affirms their centrality to the field. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Nadia R. Altschul, Megan Arnott, Jaume Aurell, Juan Gomis Coloma, Elizabeth Emery, Vincent Ferre, Valerie B. Johnson, Alexander L. Kaufman, Erin Felicia Labbie, VickieLarsen, Kevin Moberly, Brent Moberly, Alicia C. Montoya, Serina Patterson, Jeff Rider, Lindsey Simon-Jones, Richard Utz, Helen Young.

Though manifestations of play represent a burgeoning subject area in the study of post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages, they have not always received the respect and attention they deserve. This volume seeks to correct those deficiencies. Though manifestations of play represent a burgeoning subject area in the study of post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages, they have not always received the respect and attention they deserve. This volume seeks to correct those deficiencies via six essays that directly address how the Middle Ages have been put in play with regard to Alice Munro's 1977 short story "The Beggar Maid"; David Lowery's 2021 film The Green Knight; medievalist archaisms in Japanese video games; runic play in Norse-themed digital games; medievalist managerialism in the 2020 video game Crusader Kings III; and neomedieval architectural praxis in the 2014 video game Stronghold: Crusader II. The approaches and conclusions of those essays are then tested in the second section's six essays as they examine "muscular medievalism" in George R. R. Martin's 1996 novel A Game of Thrones; the queering of the Arthurian romance pattern in the 2018-20 television show She-Ra and the Princesses of Power; the interspecies embodiment of dis/ability in the 2010 film How to Train Your Dragon; late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century nationalism in Irish reimaginings of the Fenian Cycle; post-bellum medievalism in poetry of the Confederacy; and the medievalist presentation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 2020-21 Covid inoculation.

Definitions of key words and terms for the study of medievalism. The discipline of medievalism has produced a great deal of scholarship acknowledging the "makers" of the Middle Ages: those who re-discovered the period from 500 to 1500 by engaging with its cultural works, seeking inspiration from them, or fantasizing about them. Yet such approaches - organized by time period, geography, or theme - often lack an overarching critical framework. This volume aims to provide such a framework, by calling into question the problematic yet commonly accepted vocabulary used in Medievalism Studies. The contributions, by leading scholars in the field, define and exemplify in a lively and accessible style the essential terms used when speaking of the later reception of medieval culture. The terms: Archive, Authenticity, Authority, Christianity, Co-disciplinarity, Continuity, Feast, Genealogy, Gesture, Gothic, Heresy, Humor, Lingua, Love, Memory, Middle, Modernity, Monument, Myth, Play, Presentism, Primitive, Purity, Reenactment, Resonance, Simulacrum, Spectacle, Transfer, Trauma, Troubadour Elizabeth Emery is Professor of French and Graduate Coordinator at Montclair State University (Montclair, NJ, USA); Richard Utz is Chair and Professor of Medievalism Studies in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech (Atlanta, GA, USA). Contributors: Nadia Altschul, Martin Arnold, Kathleen Biddick, William C. Calin, Martha Carlin, Pam Clements, Michael Cramer, Louise D'Arcens, Elizabeth Emery, Elizabeth Fay, Vincent Ferre, Matthew Fisher, Karl Fugelso, Jonathan Hsy, Amy S. Kaufman, Nadia Margolis, David Matthews,Lauryn S. Mayer, Brent Moberly, Kevin Moberly, Gwendolyn Morgan, Laura Morowitz, Kevin D. Murphy, Nils Holger Petersen, Lisa Reilly, Edward Risden, Carol L. Robinson, Juanita Feros Ruys, Tom Shippey, Clare A. Simmons, Zrinka Stahuljak, M. Jane Toswell, Richard Utz, Angela Jane Weisl.